The infamous anti-piracy organization IFPI sent an email to warn its members NOT to any send email to colleagues that use an [email protected] email address because that domain is now owned by their rivals from the "International Federation of Pirate Interests". Unfortunately the members did not listen, and even the email about the leak leaked.

Last month a leaked email from The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) – the anti-piracy organization that represents the recording industry worldwide – revealed that they had plans to request confidential information from an ongoing police investigation of The Pirate Bay.

Several people were wondering how this email leaked, and rumors about hacked mail servers started to circulate. It now now becomes clear how the email leaked – and there is not much hacking involved – it seems that some of their members were still sending emails to [email protected] addresses – not that smart.

The IFPI of course warned their members not to use any .com addresses anymore, but ironically, this email was forwarded to a .com address a few hours later. Here’s a quote from the leaked email correspondence that was anonymously forwarded to TorrentFreak.

“… please be aware that the person operating the domain is also collecting emails that are sent in error to [email protected] You may have seen press reports regarding an email leak from IFPI , this was a result of an email being sent in error to an ifpi.com email address and is not indicative of any more serious problem with email security.”

Can you be even more stupid than to forward this message to someone using an IFPI.com address? I’ve always doubted the rumors that most people who work at these anti-piracy organizations are too dumb to tie their own shoes, but I’m starting to believe it now.

Unfortunately there was not much news in the email, the huge list of anti-pirate email addresses may come in handy sometime though. In addition, there was some info about the domain dispute the IFPI filed to get their .com domain back, as they write: “… we filed a complaint at WIPO under the dispute resolution procedure designed for cyber-squatting cases like this one. We are hopeful of a result from the WIPO procedure soon, and we will keep you updated.”